Beyond Textbooks. Straight into the Void

Today's New York times has an interesting article about the way in which some school districts are attempting to save money and represent the wave of the future by going
beyond textbooks; encouraging teachers to cobble together learning experiences from the Web, or to invest their own time in creating open-source Powerpoints that would be available for anyone's use.

"Today's students are just wired differently," one of the experts in the article is quoted as saying. No, they are not WIRED differently; they just can't read, and so many of them will gravitate toward any interface that presents them with as little reading as possible. Instead of acknowledging that reading--and being able to read synthetically and critically--is a skill crucial to the next generation of citizens, superintendents who want to go "beyond textbooks" hope to replace classroom learning with its emphasis on coming prepared to discuss and work and even sometimes collaborate--with something more like a single-person-shooter video game.

I'm the farthest thing from a Luddite, but I find this ridiculous. The author of the article identified the digital divide as one of the major drawbacks of computer-based education, but even as someone who teaches web-based courses, I can tell you that at the elementary and probably the secondary level, it's an unsound idea.

Yes, the workplaces of the future will demand that students be innovative and computer-literate, but the best and most impressive computer of all is still the human brain, and to say "knowledge is out there, I don't need to know anything, I can just Google" is to let ours degrade.

If you find "textbooks" boring and dry, have students read and discuss articles, monographs, memoirs, diaries, letters, songs, poems, great works of literature, but allow them to develop the ability to really read. Integrate math and physics lessons by having students design and build things in the classroom. Have a "life lab" where students can combine what they learn in their science lessons with practical experience. The computer is good as an occasional supplement when a student has outstripped a school's offerings but it is no substitute for a multifaceted education.